2009/9/8 Brian <brian.min...@colorado.edu>: > Some of us feel > that the foundation has become out of our reach. That no matter how much we > discuss and try to reach consensus it will just be too hard, or there will > be a lack of interest in our consensus at the foundation, for any real > change to happen. You practically have to get a grant on behalf of the > foundation anymore in order to convince them you've got a good idea.
Really? Can you give examples of stuff that used to be easy that's become harder now, and where consensus has been ignored where it would have been swiftly acted upon in the past? I do believe that much like in Wikipedia itself, we're past the low hanging fruit phase right now when it comes to WMF's objectives. It's one thing to set up a MediaWiki instance and call it Wiktionary, it's another to actually design software for supporting a multilingual dictionary and thesaurus. And so it goes with virtually every major challenge we're facing today. The "easy stuff" at this point is only easy in that it is obvious (yes, MediaWiki usability sucks), not in that it is easy to fix. Part of traditional professionalization is also to only make a commitment when you feel you can uphold it. So where a casual, informal organization is more likely to say "Yeah, sure" and then never do anything (FlaggedRevisions and SUL being two examples of this happening in the past, with no execution over multiple years), a more formal, professional organization will only make the commitment if it can allocate resources to keep it. So, as an organization matures, it will by definition say "no" more frequently, because saying "yes" too often is one of the most common signs of immaturity. We've certainly not reached the end point of that process yet. But for a _volunteer_ driven organization, it's important to make a further transition, not from "yes" to "no" in 9 out of 10 cases, but from "yes" (and nothing will happen) to "yes, and here's how _you_ can make it happen", except for the truly bad ideas. :-) I think this is where we're failing right now -- engaging more people to help us solve problems. The strategic planning process is the first attempt to scale up the small-room conversations of the past into the largest possible meaningful consultation. How do we transform those plans and proposals into volunteer workgroups and actions? [ And yes, that's a bit off-topic for the thread, but I think pretty on-topic for the list. ;-) ] -- Erik Möller Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
